Foreign ministers from the United States, India, Australia and Japan agreed on new initiatives to strengthen stability in the Indo-Pacific after a meeting in New Delhi on Tuesday.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the four-member Quad group intends to launch an Indo-Pacific Maritime Surveillance Cooperation Initiative aimed at improving the use of the four countries' surveillance capabilities to better monitor maritime activity in the region.
In this context, the group also plans to expand the sharing of near-real-time data on commercial shipping in the region.
The four countries additionally plan to work with Fiji on a port infrastructure project, Rubio said.
The ministers also agreed to deepen cooperation on critical raw materials and energy security.
Rubio attended the meeting alongside Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong, India's Subrahmanyam Jaishankar and Japan's Toshimitsu Motegi.
The Quad is a largely informal dialogue forum founded in 2007 and revived 10 years later after being dissolved in the interim.
The group is not officially directed against any particular country, but is seen as part of efforts to counter China's growing assertiveness in the region.
In a joint statement released after the meeting, the ministers expressed concern about the situation in the East China Sea and the South China Sea without mentioning China. Territorial disputes between China and its neighbours have turned these areas into dangerous flashpoints.
"We affirm our support for a free and open Indo-Pacific that allows countries to develop resilience and strengthen capacity to determine their own paths," the statement read.
The Indo-Pacific broadly refers to the region stretching from the Indian Ocean to the northern Pacific Ocean, encompassing most of Asia and extending to the west coast of the US.
